University of Virginia Library

22. CHAPTER XXII.

He had barely attained his place of shelter when
Humphries returned. He returned alone. He had dismissed
his comrades as no longer essential to his search,
and had determined upon stealing back to the neighbourhood
where the Half-Breed had been last seen, placing
himself in a position to watch him, and lingering till the
latest possible moment, in the hope to see him emerge.
The thoughts of Humphries were of the most annoying
description. He reflected bitterly on the chances now
before him, not only of his enemy's escape, but of his
own continued danger. The whole labour of pursuit
and stratagem was again to be taken over; and with this
disadvantage, that, as they had now alarmed the Half-Breed,
who must have been conscious of their recent
pursuit and search, it would be necessary to adopt some
new plan of action, and contrive some new scheme, before
they could possibly hope to entrap him. In the
meantime, to what danger was his threatened victim not
exposed, since, while effecting nothing towards his own
security, the recent adventure must only contribute to
the increased wariness of his enemy.

Full of these bitter and distracting thoughts, he took
post upon a little hillock, which rose slightly above the
miry surface which spread all around him. A huge cypress,
rising up from a shallow creek, stood like a forest

monarch directly before his eyes. The cane, in which
he had pursued so hopeless a search, spread away in a
winding line beyond the creek, and upon its slightly
waving surface his eyes were fixed in intense survey.

“It was there—there he must be still,” he said to
himself, as he looked upon its dense enclosure. “He
will come out directly, when he thinks me quite gone,
and when he can hear nothing. I will wait for him,
though I wait till sunset.”

He had taken a place of watch which gave him a full
view of the cane-brake and the scattered cypresses before
it, while his position was concealed, at the same
time, by a cluster of bushes, from any one emerging
from the region he surveyed. Here, squatting low, he
prepared his rifle, having carefully prepared an opening
for it through the bushes, whence its muzzle might be
projected at a moment's warning; and, with eyes sharpened
by a feeling of anxiety little short of desperation,
he lay quietly, the agent of a deadly hate and a shuddering
fear, watchful for that opportunity which should gratify
the one passion and silence all the apprehensions of
the other.

While he watched in quiet he heard a slight noise immediately
at hand. Something reached his ears like the
friction of bark. His breathings became suppressed in
the intenseness of his anxiety. He felt that his enemy
was near him, and his hope grew into a gnawing appetite,
which made his whole frame tremble in the nervous desire
which it occasioned. The noise was repeated a little
more distinctly—distinctly enough, indeed, to indicate
the direction from which it came. His glance rested
upon the aged cypress which stood immediately before
him.

“Could he be there?” was his self-made inquiry.
The tree stood in the water. The hollow did not seem
large enough above the creek to admit the passage of a
human body. “Yet it might be so.” He regretted,

while he gazed, that they had not examined it; and he
regretted this the more as he now saw that the upper
edges of the hollow above the creek were still wet, as
if they had been splashed by the hurried passage of some
large body into the tree. He kept quiet, however, while
these thoughts were going through his mind, and determined
patiently to wait events.

“He must come out at last,” was his muttered
thought, “if he is there, and I can wait, I reckon, jist as
long as he.”

Was it an instinct that prompted him to raise his eyes
at this moment, from the hollow at the foot of the cypress
to the shaft of the tree, as it stretched away above?
He did so; and, in the sudden glance which he gave, the
glare of a wide and well-known eye met his own, staring
around, from a narrow and natural fissure in the stupendous
column some ten feet from its base. With a howl
of positive delight he sprang to his feet, and the drop
of the deadly instrument fell upon the aperture. But,
before he could spring the lock or draw the trigger, the
object had disappeared.

The Half-Breed—for it was he—had sunk down the
moment Humphries met his eye, and was no more to be
seen. But he was there! That was the consolation
of his enemy.

“He is there—I have him!” he cried aloud. No
answer reached him from within. Humphries bounded
into the water to the hollow at the bottom of the tree,
through which the slender form of Blonay had resolutely
compressed itself. He thrust his hand into the opening,
and endeavoured, by grasping the legs of the Half-Breed,
to drag him down to the aperture; but he failed entirely
to do so. A bulging excrescence on the tree—a knob, or
knee, as it is called—within, served the beleaguered man
as a place of rest; and upon this, firmly planting his feet,
no effort of his enemy could possibly dislodge him. To
thrust his rifle up the hollow, and shoot as he stood, was

the next thought of Humphries; but the first attempt to
do this convinced him of the utter impracticability of the
design. The opening, though sufficiently large for the
entrance of a body so flexible as that of a man, was yet
too short to admit of the passage of a straight, unyielding
shaft of the rifle's length, unless by burying the instrument
in the water to a depth so great as would bring
the lock much below it. The difficulty was a novel one,
and for a moment the practised woodman was at fault.
What was he to do? His enemy was within his reach,
yet beyond his control, and might as well be a thousand
miles off. To leave the tree, to go in search of his companions,
or to procure an axe to fell it, would only be to
afford an opportunity for the egress and escape of his
victim. This was not to be thought upon. He seized
his knife, and though assured that by its use he could do
no more than annoy the Half-Breed, situated where he
was, and could by no possibility inflict a vital injury, he
yet proceeded to employ it.

“It may bring him out,” he muttered to himself, “it'll
vex and bring him out.”

He thrust the weapon up the hollow, and struck right
and left at the feet and ankles of the inmate. But with
the first graze of the weapon upon his legs Blonay drew
them up by contracting his knees—an effort which the
immense size of the tree—the hollow of which might
have contained three men with ease—readily enabled
him to make. Humphries soon saw the fruitlessness of
his effort with the knife, and, seemingly, the fruitlessness
of any effort which he could then make. In his rage,
exasperated at the vicinity of his foe, yet of his seeming
safety, he shouted aloud, in the hope to bring back
his departed companions. A fiendish chuckle sounded
scornfully from within the tree, and seemed to taunt him
with his feebleness and fury. He renewed his efforts,—
he struck idly with his knife within the hollow, until,
burying the blade in one of the projecting knobs, it

snapped off short at the handle, and was of no more service.
Furious at these repeated failures, and almost
exhausted by his efforts, he poured forth curses and denunciations
in the utmost profusion upon the unheeding
and seemingly indifferent Half-Breed.

“Come out like a man,” he cried to him, in an idle
challenge; “come out and meet your enemy, and not, like
a snake, crawl into your hollow, and lie in waiting for his
heel. Come out, you skunk, and you shall have a fair
fight, and nobody shall come between us. You shall have
your distance jist as you want it, and it shall be the
quickest fire that shall make the difference of chances between
us. Come out, you spawn of a nigger, and face
me, if you're a man.”

Thus did he run on in his ineffectual fury, and impotently
challenge an enemy who was quite too wary to
give up the vantage-ground which he possessed. The
same fiendish chuckle which had enraged the trooper so
much before, again responded to his challenge from the
tree,—again stimulated him to newer efforts, which, like
the past, were unavailing. The Half-Breed condescended
no other reply. He gave no response whatsoever to
the denunciations of his enemy; but, coolly turning himself
occasionally in his spacious sheath, he now and
then raised himself slightly upon his perch, and placing
his mouth abreast of the upper aperture in the tree, gratified
himself by an occasional inhalation of the fresh air
—a commodity not so readily afforded by his limited accommodations.

Humphries, meanwhile, almost exhausted by his own
fury not less than by its hopeless labours, had thrown
himself upon the bank in front of the opening, watching
it with the avidity of an eagle. But Blonay gave him
no second chance for a shot while he lay in this position.
He watched in vain. Even as he lay, however, a new
plan suggested itself to his mind, and one so certain of
its effect, that he cursed himself for his stupidity that did

not suffer him to think of it before. With the thought,
he started to his feet. Detached masses of old and decaying
trees, the remains of many a forest of preceding
ages, lay freely scattered around him. Here and there
a lightwood knot, and here and there the yet undecayed
branch, the tribute of some still living pine, to the passing
hurricane, lay contiguously at hand. He gathered them
up with impetuous rapidity. He collected a pile at the
foot of the cypress, and prepared himself for the new
experiment. Selecting from this pile one of the largest
logs, he thrust it through the water, and into the hollow
of the tree, seeking to wedge it between the inner knobs
on which the feet of Blonay were evidently resting. But
the Half-Breed soon became aware of the new design,
which he opposed, as well as he could, with a desperate
effort. He saw, and was instantly conscious of, his danger.
With his feet he baffled for a long time the efforts
of his enemy, until, enraged at length, Humphries seized
upon a jagged knot of lightwood, which he thrust against
one of the striving legs of the Half-Breed, and employing
another heavy knot as a mallet, he drove the wedge
forward unrelentingly against the yielding flesh, which
was torn and lacerated dreadfully by the sharp edges of
the wood. Under the sudden pain of the wound, the
feet were drawn up, and the woodman was suffered to
proceed in his design. The miserable wretch in the tree,
thus doomed to be buried alive, was now willing to come
to terms with his enemy. His voice hollowly reached
the ears of his exulting captor, as he agreed to accept
his terms of fight, if he would suffer him to come down.
But the reply of Humphries partook somewhat of the
savage nature of his victim.

“No, no! you d—d skunk, you shall die in your
hole, like a varmint as you are; and the cypress shall
be your coffin, as it has been your house.”

The voice within muttered something of fight.

“It's too late for that,” was the reply. “I gave you

the chance once, and you wouldn't-take it. It's the
worse for you, since you don't get another. Here you
shall stay, if hard chunks and solid lightwood can keep
you, until your yellow flesh rots away from your cursed
bones! Here you stay till the lightning rips open your
coffin, or the hurricane in September tumbles you into
the swamp.”

The voice of Blonay was still heard, though more and
more feebly, as the hard wood was driven into the hollow—mass
wedging mass—until all sounds from within,
whether of pleading or defiance, seemed to die away into
a plaintive murmur, that came faintly through the thickening
barrier, and was almost unheard by Humphries, as,
with the knotty lever which he employed, he sent the
heavy wedges, already firm enough, more thoroughly into
the bosom of the tree.

His labour was at length completed. The victim was
fastened up securely, beyond his own efforts of escape.
He was effectually sealed up, and the seal could only be
taken off by a strong hand from without. Where, in
that deep forest recess, wild and tangled, could succour
find him out? What hope that his feeble voice could
reach the ears of any passing mortal? There was no
hope but in the mercy of his enemy, and of that the captive
and doomed man could have no hope, even if he
pleaded for his life—an idea that never once entered into
his mind.

His doom was written, and the partisan paused before
the tree, and his eye rested on the aperture above. The
body of the imprisoned man was heard to writhe about in
his cell. Humphries stepped back, the better to survey
the aperture. In another moment he beheld the blear
eyes of his victim peering forth upon him, and, firm and
fearless as he was, he shuddered at their expression.
Their natural ugliness was enlarged and exaggerated by
the intensity of his despair. Before, they had been but
disgusting—they were now frightful to the beholder. As

he looked upon him, the first feeling of Humphries was
to lift his rifle and shoot him; but, as the weapon was
elevated, he saw that the Half-Breed no longer shrank
from the meditated shot. On the contrary, he seemed
now rather to invoke his death, as even a mercy in that
preferable form, at the hands of his enemy. But his desire
was not complied with.

“No, no. Why should I waste the bullet upon you?
You took to the hollow like a beast. You shall die like
one. It's a fit death for one like you. You've been
hunting after my blood quite too long. I won't spill
yours, but I'll leave it to dry up in your heart, and you
shall feel it freezing and drying up all the time.”

He surveyed his victim as he spoke with a malicious
joy, which at length grew into a painful sort of delight,—
it was so intense—so maddening—so strange,—since it
followed a transition from the extremest sense of apprehension
to one of unlooked-for security. His ecstasies
at length broke forth into tumultuous and unmitigated
laughter.

The deportment of the Half-Breed was changed. His
features seemed to undergo elevation, and the utter hopelessness
of his fate, as he now beheld it, even gave dignity
to their expression. He spoke to his enemy in
language of the most biting asperity. His sarcasm was
coarse, but effective, as it accorded with his own nature
and the education of his foe. He taunted him with cowardice,
with every meanness, and strove to irritate him
by reproaches of himself and his connexions—aspersions
upon his mother and his sister, in language and assertion,
which, among the vulgar, is almost always effectual
in irritating to the last degree of human violence.
The object of Blonay was to provoke Humphries to the
use of the more ready weapon, which would have given
him death without the prolonged torture consequent upon
such a doom as that to which he was now destined.
But the partisan readily divined his object, and denied
him the desired boon.

“No, no—catch old birds with chaff,” he replied,
coolly. “You shall die as you are. I'll just take the liberty
of putting a plug into that hollow, which will give you
less chance to talk out, as you now seem pleased to do.
I'll stop out a little more of the sweet air, so that you
may enjoy better what I leave you.”

Thus saying, he threw together a few chunks at the
foot of the tree, and, rising upon them, well provided with
a wedge estimated to fit the aperture, he prepared to drive
it in, and placed it at the opening for that purpose. The
desperate Blonay thrust one hand through the crevice, in
the vain hope to exclude the wedge. But a blow from
the lightwood knot with which Humphries had provided
himself as a sort of mallet, crushed the extended fingers
almost into a mass, and the Half-Breed must have fainted
from the pain, as the hand was instantly withdrawn;
and, when the partisan drove in the wedge, the face of
the victim had sunk below the opening, and was no
longer to be seen. His task completed, he descended
from his perch, threw aside the chunks which had supported
him, and set off to find his horse. He was at
last secure from the hunter of blood—he had triumphed
—and yet he could not keep down the fancy, which continually,
as he went, imbodied the supposed cries of the
Half-Breed in little gusts of wind, that seemed to pursue
nim; and, when he emerged from the wood, a strange
chill went through his bones, and he looked back momently,
even when the gigantic cypress, which was the
sepulchre of his enemy, no longer reared up its solemn
spire in his sight. It was no longer behind him. It
seemed to move before him faster than his horse; and
he spurred the animal furiously forward, seeking to pass
the fast-travelling tree, and to escape the moaning sound
which ever came after him upon the breeze.